Abacus Data late last month released a poll showing that 55 per cent of Canadians are quite worried about pollution of drinking water, rivers, lakes, reservoirs and contamination of soil by toxic waste.Photo: File, Reuters

Mike De Souza

Published: March 17, 2013 - 3:20 PM

Updated: March 18, 2013 - 11:06 AM

OTTAWA — The Harper government’s budget cuts to scientific research at Environment Canada have compromised the department’s capacity to crack down on cancer-linked pollution and its mandate to enforce clean air regulations, say enforcement officers in a collection of internal emails obtained by Postmedia News.

As the government continues consultations with the oil and gas industry on regulations to address rising heat-trapping greenhouse gases, the emails, exchanged between Environment Canada enforcement officers from various regions including Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver, said that the government was eliminating the only Canadian group capable of writing and supervising credible testing methods for new and existing rules to impose limits on pollution from smokestacks.

One officer from Montreal noted that some recently adopted regulations controlling the release of a chromium compound — that Environment Canada says is “known to cause cancer in humans” — could not be enforced without support from the group of scientists, which was disbanded by the federal government following Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s 2012 budget.

“Air pollution is not going to vanish and it is quite reasonable to believe that other substances released in the atmosphere might become regulated,” wrote environmental enforcement officer Vincent Pretty, in an email sent on Dec. 6, 2012. “Retaining the service of a trained stack test technician and an experienced air emission scientist is probably a very strategic choice for enforcement or for the department to make now given our current and future mandate to enforce clean air regulations.”

The emails were generated in response to questions raised by Environment Canada management about whether it should ask the government to save the team. When asked on Friday, Environment Canada said it couldn’t immediately comment on the correspondence. Environment Minister Peter Kent said through a spokeswoman Sunday that he didn’t “have a role in the enforcement decision-making process,” referring questions back to the department.

At the time of the cuts, Kent’s office estimated the government would save about $600,000 per year by eliminating the seven-member team and turning to other sources for support such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

But Pretty also said that other government agencies, including an industrial waste monitoring division of the city of Montreal, had relied on Environment Canada’s expertise and called him after hearing about the cuts to voice their concerns.

Environment Canada’s enforcement officers would not do smokestack testing by themselves. Instead, they would invite the Environment Canada specialists to oversee testing by consultants or to review technical reports to ensure compliance.

Pretty wrote that the enforcement branch didn’t have the expertise to assess the quality of test reports on smokestacks from private consulting firms, now that the team has been disbanded.

“I don’t see our (officers) performing stack tests even if we had the equipment, unless the (officer) has significant background as (a) stack test technician,” he wrote. “This (reviewing reports) is something that would probably exceed our capacity to identify significant methodological non-compliance.”

In emails released through access to information legislation, other officers replied to Pretty, saying that they agreed with his “eloquent” assessment and that everyone was “on the same wavelength” on the issue.

Environment Canada has not yet announced a plan to replace the team. But one internal department proposal about its plans for the next few years has proposed to continue some of their functions within other positions. This has prompted a letter of complaint from the president of the Union of Environment Workers, who noted that each scientist had received a letter stating that their “functions” were no longer required.

“Who will be performing these functions after March 29th?” union president Todd Panas asked in a Feb. 11, 2013 letter to Environment Canada Deputy Minister Bob Hamilton. “Who will verify whether or not the work is credible or accurate?”

After reviewing the emails, Bill Van Heyst, an associate professor of engineering from the University of Guelph who specializes in air quality, said the correspondence shows that the government is overloading its enforcement branch.

“The problem is that the environmental officers and Environment Canada basically have a blind spot,” said Van Heyst, who has worked with the dismantled emissions research team. “You can have the best consultant give you a report and you have no idea whether it’s the best answer. There’s no technical ability that resides within Environment Canada to assess these stack testing protocols, the stack testing methodologies and more importantly the stack testing results and what they mean in terms of compliance.”

Liberal environment critic Kirsty Duncan said the comments in the emails also suggest the government doesn’t want to crack down on industrial pollution.

“This is an environment department that’s in crisis,” said Duncan. “The government is soft on polluters and tough on the environment.”